New York Times Halves Monthly Free Article Views To Ten

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has announced that, starting in April, visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 10 free articles a month, down from 20 articles currently. The NYTimes paywall was put into effect last year, and seems to have been a success, with nearly half a million digital subscriptions to all of Times Co.'s websites; this despite the fact that the paywall is trivial to circumvent (for example, by deleting all cookies from nytimes.com)." The submitter included a link to the WSJ article on the change, which appears to also be paywalled.

Comments

Oh Well

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's their site, and their content, and they can decide who gets how much for free. If people don't like it they can get their news somewhere else or buy a subscription. This is how the market is supposed to work.

Re:Oh Well

[nospam007]

"If people don't like it they can get their news somewhere else or buy a subscription. This is how the market is supposed to work."

Or they could just delete the cookie and read on.

Re:Oh Well

[Hadlock]

I just open all NYT and WSJ articles in "incognito mode" or whatever it's called on your favorite browser.
 
I like to think of it as a game, where you lose one life each time you accidentally click on an article without opening it in incognito mode. If you lose all 10 lives, you "lose" the game and can't read good journalism for the remainder of the month.

Re:Oh Well

[khr]

Yeah, it's working. I pay for it, not because I can't get around the paywall, but because they provide a product I think is worth the money.

Re:Oh Well

[SpectraLeper]

Or you can use God Mode to always win, with something like Incognito Regex for Chrome.

Re:Oh Well

[samkass]

You know, my grocery store recently increased prices on produce despite the fact that it's easy to take stuff off the shelves and run out the door with it... What does the ease of circumvention have to do with it? Some people will steal if they can get away with it, some will pay their share.

Re:Oh Well

[CastrTroy]

That's the big problem though. What constitutes a "read", and how do they really track it? Simply clicking on a link to an article shouldn't really count as a read, as you could denial-of-service a whole bunch of people simply by sending them to a page with a bunch of iframes. It doesn't even fit with how many people use the internet, where they will open 15 links in different tabs, gloss over the first paragraph, decide the rest isn't worth reading and close the tab.

Re:Oh Well

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Oh noes! Now reading without permission is stealing! By the way, if you're reading this, then you have agreed to my terms of $0.01 per glance. I think you'll agree, with insightful comments such as mine you're getting one heck of a deal!

Re:Oh Well

[bill_mcgonigle]

I pay for it, not because I can't get around the paywall, but because they provide a product I think is worth the money.

Hey, man, you're ruining this thread's neocommunist vibe.

Re:Oh Well

[MightyYar]

LOL @ "stealing".

Tell me, did I sign some kind of a contract with the NY Times where I promise to keep their data on my machine in exchange for their services? Am I "stealing" if I load their results in a browser that doesn't support persistent cookies?

They offer up web pages on a public webserver, and even allow sites like Google to crawl (partnering really, see the robots.txt) their site.

You probably think it is "stealing" to block known advertising sites as well.

Re:Oh Well

[IMightB]

It's actually pretty amazing to change your agent string to googlebot and see what opens up for you. For example, all those tech sites that want you to sign up to get an answer suddenly become wide open.

Re:Oh Well

[MightyYar]

I don't pay for it because, while I think the Times' reporting is top-notch, the print side has too much power and keeps the digital version artificially high to prevent poaching. The Kindle version is $20/month and is totally gimped and does not include digital access. Meanwhile the dead-tree edition is about $30/month and comes with unlimited digital access. You can get the dead-tree edition weekday-only for the same price as the Kindle version, and that also includes unlimited digital access.

But this is the best part: just digital access, no Kindle, no dead-tree is... $8.75/week! Yes, $38/month for less product than the dead tree edition. The mind boggles. I refuse to pile up a bunch of unused newspapers just to save $18/month for digital access, so they can pound sand.

Re:Oh Well

[MightyYar]

I was just comparing same-level-of-access. Yes, you can get the web and smartphone for just over $16/month ($3.75/week)... of course you can also get the print edition weekly for $3.85/week that comes with the full digital access, so a 10 cent/week difference between the $16 smartphone only and $38/month full access plans, with a free paper thrown in to boot.

Makes no sense unless you consider their print edition trying to hold on for dear life and calling the shots at the marketing level. At the very least, I should be able to buy the print edition for my Kindle without having to take delivery of an actual paper newspaper. As it is right now, the Kindle version is not complete and costs more than weekday delivery. The Times will die out when their print customers do, and they seem fine with this situation.

To me it is an amazing squandering of an empire. They could have been Amazon... offer the print edition on an ebook reader of their own design. Throw the reader in for free. Put up a store offering books and other periodicals for the same reader. BAM, instant userbase and just like that they are in the 21st century. The Kindle came out in late 2007, so it should have been technically possible to create a NY Times Kindle back then, when they still had a circulation over 1 million. Probably too late now for the Grey Lady.

Re:Oh Well

[tlhIngan]

That's the big problem though. What constitutes a "read", and how do they really track it? Simply clicking on a link to an article shouldn't really count as a read, as you could denial-of-service a whole bunch of people simply by sending them to a page with a bunch of iframes. It doesn't even fit with how many people use the internet, where they will open 15 links in different tabs, gloss over the first paragraph, decide the rest isn't worth reading and close the tab.

I know the old exception is quite easy. You could go to NYTimes.com and read 20 articles a month there.

Linked articles from blogs don't count, and neither do articles linked from search engines. The reasoning for this is simple - blogs and search engines bring in viewers. If they stay, they can read 20 more (or 10 now) articles for free on the main site.

Basically, occasional readers (those who read via blogs and such) aren't subject to much paywalling at all.

And that's why the NYTimes paywall is a success where other paywalls failed.

Other paywalls let you read a paragraph or two before demanding payment. NYTimes lets you read the rest for free. If you like it, you may read more until you hit your limit. But you won't hit your limit if you only read NYTimes via another website.

There are enough ways to bypass the paywall that those who really wanted to could (basically by googling the headline and clicking that way), but most people are lazy and having to google to read another article gets old fast.

Basically, NYTimes found a way to get its articles read (via blogs and news aggregators like Google) but still being able to get some money from those who like it enough to read it (by not offering it entirely for free). So it doesn't matter how many times NYTimes articles appear in say, /. since they don't count. But those who wanted to read the NYTimes for free by using its website is blocked.

Pretty brilliant, actually. Blogs and aggregators bring people in, and you only charge them if they stay. First hit's free.

Re:Oh Well

[Hadlock]

Trap sprung, nerd!

And?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It's working for them, that's actually pretty cool. Those who want it pay or circumvent; those who don't move on to other options. '

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the way it's supposed to work?

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's working for them, that's actually pretty cool. Those who want it pay or circumvent; those who don't move on to other options. '
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the way it's supposed to work?

It is. But the larger question is, can this model be useful for everybody. You must remember how a lot of people were (and are) of the opinion that this won't work in the long term. NYT has been kind of pigheaded about this... and it's apparently working. For them.

So... can anybody copying this can expect the same? Is there a formula that can tell us with some precision, how many of your readers you can expect to retain if you implement a paywall? That's the interesting part.

Re:And?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It will work for anybody in a similar position: producing a lot of content that people want to read, and are willing to pay to do so. Since NYT is unlikely to release detailed numbers, the only formula is trial and error to find the right balance between alienating customers and attracting them. (And this move indicates that they're still refining that balance.)

Re:And?

[localman57]

If "work" means only 454,000 subscribers total, compared to Spotify adding 1.5 million customer to a total of 2.5 mil, or Hulu reaching 1.5 mil customers in a year... I don't think it's working for NYT.

That's 2001 think. How much revenue has Hulu gained from those 1.5 mil customers? Volume doesn't help you if you aren't making an average profit per customer. Lexis Nexis and other such firms have relatively small customer bases, but generate a large amount of revenue per customer. That's 2012 think. At least for the majority of new companies that will still be around in 2016.

"trivial to circumvent"

[circletimessquare]

you realize that for most people deleting cookies only from nytimes.com is technically challenging

and even if it isn't, the hassle factor is enough to move people to buy

Re:"trivial to circumvent"

[Sir_Sri]

And the point is a polite reminder that they can't get enough advertising to cover the cost of the content you want, so if you want the content you should pay them.

There are a lot of ways around the paywall. I don't think they are deeply serious about making it half free, half subscription, because people who don't want to pay really won't, and they may come up with a relatively bad scheme to make the NYT involuntarily free if they can't simply circumvent it. I'd rather those who know just delete cookies, than start doing a daily/hourly torrent dump of my website or something. If you annoy pirates enough they'll come up with such and easy way to pirate that no one will ever pay. The NYT seems to have fairly successfully (for the moment) found a middle ground between getting people to pay, while giving away content to those who absolutely wouldn't pay anyway.

Re:"trivial to circumvent"

[Stewie241]

I just feel sorry for the poor information that just so desperately wants to be free but is destined to live its life trapped behind a paywall.

Good: the writers get paid.

[concealment]

I'm glad the NYT has found a way to get money for its content. Internet advertising is slowly being recognized as bunk because most of the people spending a lot of time on the internet are not going to buy anything. They're usually retired, young, or unemployed. As a result, the writers aren't going to get paid if the newspaper relies on advertising, and this means that there will be less quality writing for the rest of us. It's better to pay for something and have it be of a higher quality.

The real travesty is that they paid $40 million for that goofball paywall.

Get Over It Already

[eldavojohn]

I pay almost zero attention to east coast media; mostly because they don't pay any attention to the west coast (except for Hollywood).

Yeah and us midwest coast people that read The Star Tribune? We should just totally ignore everything that's happening on the West and East coasts because attention isn't focused on us, the reader, one hundred percent of the time? I shouldn't partake in the enjoyment of the New York Times' excellent book reviews or international coverage because none of those happen to be about me where I live? I shouldn't read the LA Times because even though their 1992 riot coverage won them a Pulitzer, they didn't cover the riots that followed my college hockey team's national championship loss?

Seriously, this East coast/West coast bullshit has got to stop. Get over yourselves and appreciate good news with good factchecking and a budget to send your reporters to be first hand sources.

Re:Get Over It Already

[quarterbuck]

I think of it as a progression.
Before 90s New York Times and the Post were the only sources of real news. They had actual reporters on the field. They were playing the role of both news aggregators (like Reuters/AP) and a paper (with the paper version). Local newspapers then added local content to Times/Reuters/AP news and printed it .
Then after internet, their paper business shrunk while their online version did not catch up enough. So NYTimes became a paper with a lot of reporters on the field, but with not enough ads sold to pay for them. The local newspapers got killed because everyone figured out that you could get 90% of the news on the NY times website for free and the remaining regional coverage on local radio/TV.
Now NYTimes is making the online version expensive. This should really have helped the local newspapers, but they are all dead and people did not grow up subscribing to local newspapers and will not start anymore.
You can still get news from AP or Reuters online for free and without any of the editorial biases (real or perceived) of the Times. East Coasters can still get a slightly biased coverage from Bloomberg (and Bloomberg Businessweek).
The people who missed out are indeed the midwesterners -they lost their local papers while times won't serve them anymore at zero cost.

Re:Get Over It Already

[Gilmoure]

Everyone's too polite in Canada to make news.

Re:Get Over It Already

[theNAM666]

>believe that despite his ravaging where we live with tornados on a yearly basis, we've got a direct line to God.

If most of the people in the South called me on a daily basis, and I had tornado powers, I'd smite them too.

Re:Get Over It Already

[lennier]

You guys do know there are other countries, right? Stuff happens in them all the time that could arguably be called "news" and doesn't involve America at all.

Yes, but for the most part...that news has virtually no effect on the common American's daily life...so we generally don't care that much what else is happening in the world.

And if only that were true in reverse.

Sadly, anyone living in the rest of the world has to become familiar with what is going on in the USA, not only because we import most of our entertainment media from the US, but also because the USA tends to export its policies aggressively, via military, diplomatic and economic channels. So that today's NYSE financial trivia or Washington soap opera tends to become tomorrow's drone strikes in Afghanistan or FBI extradition raid in Switzerland or New Zealand. This accelerated during the Dubya years, we took a deep breath when against all odds Obama got in, and now, with the US Presidential elections raising the odds of a Republican uber-Bush wanting to start more wars, we're all biting our nails and anxiously looking at the USA like we do Iran, Israel, North Korea, Putin's Russia, and China. Wondering just how the chips will fall, which of several hardline warmongering factions will gain control, and where the missiles will land next.

Slashdotters aside, I'm not sure many average Americans really actually understand this glass-fortress effect. It seems to me that there's still this strongly held folksy belief that America is somehow an isolated little farming town wanting nothing more than to stay blissfully uninvolved with the world, and that the world just "hates our freedoms" or "feels jealous". But the "city on the hill" is now more like a brightly lit Last Days of Nero's Rome themed Hell's Angels rock arena spectacular with real guns.

I really do wish middle America were the sleepy farm town so many of you folks seem to think it is. We wouldn't be nearly so scared of (and for) you.

So maybe

[Compaqt]

Slashdot should post half as many links to NyTimes.com per month?

Already stopped

[vlm]

Already stopped. I see the same from my friends and relatives. You get the weird pop up, then "oh, its just the times, skip to the next article" in the future. If they have 1/2 mil subscriptions, thats great, but realize thats around a third of one percent of the population. Low enough to not have influence on the population anymore.

Its like making a psuedo-news story that I'm now only allowed to buy half the number of Kia cars that I bought in the past. Hmm 0/2 is still 0.

The bad part is they've moved themselves from the "interesting online newspaper" category to being something to avoid and skip over like ExpertSexChange.

Re:Already stopped

[jbeaupre]

Not sure what your browsing to bring up that kind of link, but I hope you're not skipping ExpertSexChange to go to something like DIYSexChange.

Can't RTFA

[tepples]

If people don't like it they can get their news somewhere else

How many NYTimes.com articles does Slashdot link to per month? Expect a bunch of "can't RTFA" comments that until now had been reserved for the major scholarly journals and WSJ.

I suscribe - and I'm annoyed!

[sampson7]

But probably not for the reasons you think.... I have been a subscriber to the Sunday dead-tree edition of the paper for several years now. This, in theory, gives me free access to all online content. But the login system never remembers me. Not on my work computer, not on my iPad, not on my home computer. And the login is often squirrely too.

So I typically use my "20 free articles a month" rather than login each and every freak'n time. I know, this doesn't exactly rise to the level of suffering that really warrants a post - but it's pretty damn annoying. Going to 10 just makes the site even less user-friendly than it already is. Is it really that hard to develop a login system that works???

Problem with Digital Subscriptions

[jcern]

Since I purchased an iPad, I have started reading more and more of my newspapers and magazines on their apps. I find that the overall experience is just as enjoyable, and the convenience is great. For most of what I generally read there is complimentary digital access for their print subscribers. So, I get both versions and this is fine for weekly or monthly periodicals. However, for newspapers this can be annoying.

When it came to the NYTimes, after they started charging I called to find out about subscription options. While I don't mind the idea of paying $35-40 per month for something I read, what I found was that it was significantly cheaper if I ordered the print version which also includes digital access. The reason for this is that print ad rates remain significantly higher than digital, so therefore they make up for this by charging extra for digital only access. I suppose you could always donate the paper to the library or something, but that involves too much effort for me, and I for one didn't want to waste the paper by not reading it. So, I ended up using a print subscriber's digital access (which is surprisingly legal). I think many publications are in the same boat.

I think it is great that papers are starting to find a way to make money off of their efforts, and the NYTimes has been smart by easing into their pay model. However, the issue as I see it is that until they can find a way to level the playing field with their old-school paper offerings, the digital version is going to continue to be seen as a throwaway by advertisers who find little value in it - and then consequently by readers since it can be perceived as a ripoff. Hopefully, a successful pay model is a step towards this, but I think this may just be finding a way to make some extra money without getting to the root of the problem. I guess the alternative is that we move toward an economy where we recognize and pay for the actual value of something and not a heavily subsidized price.

Re:Whatever!

[0123456]

Sure, there are rumours they still exist, but I see no evidence of it because I refuse to pay.

Yeah, I was shocked when I saw this story here because I hadn't seen anyone link to a New York Times article in a long time and thought they'd gone bust or something.

And nothing of value was lost.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Journalism is pretty dead anyway, but have fun on your trip to obscurity NYT.

500,000 subscribers

[ledow]

According to a quick Google:

Half a million PAYING subscribers is in line with the number of people with an Iridium satellite phone, the number of people who use MuveMusic on their smartphone, or the number of people who pay to play Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, etc.

I.e. statistically insignificant, especially if you only count the US. I can't name anyone in the above groups, for example, and it's the amount of people Spotify attract in just two months.

I can't remember the last time I saw an NYT article (despite, a few years ago, coming across them all the time online). I certainly can't remember the last time I tried to "bypass" anything to see a website like that. Or the last time I subscribed to any website (I did have a subscription to LWN.net - and Slashdot - at one point but more as a donation to them than providing any benefit to me).

Hell, the last time I actually bought a paper, there *wasn't* a decent online version of any UK paper (but I was still getting all my news from the Internet), and the paper wasn't even for me.

You can try singing about your paywall all you like but the more restrictions you put on non-paywall activities, the more it confirms my suspicion - they know they will die if they don't get more subscription readers, if they aren't already dying. If they were happy and comfortable and making lots of profit, they wouldn't care about the article limit, or they'd raise it, or they'd have "free" versions and "premium" versions and not have to crowbar you into the premium version all the time.

My granddad's generation - who took whatever news was fed to them - would probably be that loyal to a paper, or even a political party, without thinking. Nowadays? If you don't put your news online where I can see it, it won't get seen.

Re:500,000 subscribers

[MisterSquid]

This move comes 6 days after I sent an email to the NYTimes.com about the paywall. Here's what I wrote:

First, I want to thank you for providing your articles free of charge for so many years. I also want to acknowledge the high quality of your reporting.

I've been reading the NYTimes online since 1998. My username is mistersquid. I have a low-traffic blog and have frequently linked to the NYTimes. Most of the articles I read from the NYTimes I find through RSS. I know how to route around the NYTimes paywall to retrieve articles, both by using 3rd party aggregators and by URL-rewriting.

However, in the last two months I have severely curtailed my reading of the NYTimes online because I understand the NYTimes wants to monetize online reading and I am unwilling to pay money. That is, I consciously avoid clicking links to NYTimes articles and look for other sources (eg. BBC), even though I know how to get around the restrictions.

I know I am only one person, but I wanted to let you know that even the nominal restrictions on article availability discourages me from reading your articles even though I know how to get the information for no charge. Insofar as readership is only as valuable as the money they pay, the NYTimes editorial perspective is valueless to the public. I don't believe this is what the NYTimes wants, but it is the situation that obtains in my particular case.

I don't have any ideas about how the NYTimes can generate revenue from people like me. I do know, though, that a paywall makes me look for the information elsewhere.

Sometimes I consider paying, but the non-discounted price for online access seems unreasonable given there is no physical distribution. I will not condescend to you by suggesting a reasonable price; I only know it will have to be lower than it currently is for me to consider paying instead of avoiding NYTimes online content.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my views regarding your pay wall.

tl;dr: You're charging WAY too much for your digital-only subscription ($180/year minimum) which costs much less than paper to distribute.

The question I have is...

[pdboddy]

If you are a paying subscriber, do they remove the ads?

Re:The question I have is...

[Talennor]

I used to by the paper version. It had ads.

Cost of print subscription cheaper than digital?

[Sir Homer]

Am I reading this wrong? It seems that the cost of a print subscription is $3.85 a week but INCLUDES the $35/mo (holy crap that's expensive) digital subscription.

It kind of baffles me 500,000 people paying as much as ISP service for access to a single newpaper? Are they including print subscriptions in that number

The real question

[HangingChad]

The real question is whether anyone will notice the NYT going behind a pay wall? I keep hoping Fox News would disappear behind one, but finally had to throw in the towel and install MurdochBlock.

I doubt I'd notice if either one of them disappeared. It's so amusing to watch colonial media struggle with a new frontier.

Is deleting the NYT cookie considered theft yet?

[ankhank]

How long til deleting the cookie they put on your computer equals breaking the lock on their door and stealing their stuff, eh?